Author: cdwan

New essay is up: privacy. This puts me only one more behind for this week to be back on track.

Turns out that our tax reamage is due to the fact that we don’t have enough deductible mortgage interest. I.e: We decided to live within our means … so the Man gets the money. Had we bought a mansion and been totally strapped to pay for it, we would pay lower taxes. Bastards. It’s not a law that encourages home ownership, it’s a law that encourages a specific sort of debt. Give me a goddamn credit for owning a house and leave it at that.

Bastards.

Less than half of the pictures (those from my camera, and thus my point of view) are now online. Clicky

In other news, taxation this year will be most brutal, apparently. Squeeeeee, and not in a happy way.

I will be in Ann Arbor from April 7 – 9 for some sort of a cappella alumni reunion. I plan to have some free time, and I would love to see each and every one of you.

I was idly sketching on the backs of envelopes while on the trains last week, and I came up with the following:

jet lag sucks

Home again, home again, riggity jig. Both cats and all the plants seem to be well, though the peppers have still not germinated … and the cat is downright clingy. She’s on the desk between me and the laptop, leaning on my chest as I type. Now is that cute, or what?

The trip back was long but uneventful. We hauled ass through Venice to get to the Doge’s palace in time to see them hoist the flags, blew through yet more stunning history and art, and halued ass back to pick up suitcases and make our way to the airport. Sitting about 100ft apart were two options for transport:

(1) Water taxi. 90E. Sexy, fast, and holy God that’s a lot of money for a cab ride
(2) Shuttle bus: 3E. It’s leaving now.

We took the bus.

My mind is mostly shot, and I had about 800 messages in the ole INBOX, so I’m about out for the evening. One last memory:

We’re in a pub (Irish style) that’s just next to the Duomo in Florence. We’re waiting to order from the Aussie bartender, when she looks over our heads at someone who’s just come in. In a perfect “crap american” accent she calls out “Bahn G’your No, Ah More-ahy! How’s the head love?” To which he replied “Just f-ing great. I’ll have a snakebite.”

This same bar had graffiti on the wall saying “You can’t be lost if you don’t care where you are.”

Posting from Venice, city of rivers. Tomorrow, we slam through the Doge’s palace before taking a water taxi to the airport and beginning the long journey home.

You’re gonna want to watch the spine on that

Took the train to Florence this morning. Uneventful. Apparently we’ve figured out how to take a train in just about any language. As usual, people were asking us directions in the station. Happens every single time.

In which I learn how to use enough control characters to create an LJ cut

==Posting on the next day because the stupid internet cafe reboots their machines when your time runs out, thank God for the new Autosave feature==

Just finished a very fine dinner at an upscale vegetarian restaurant and Jazz club. You heard me right. Vegetarian. Since 1976. Jazz club. Upscale. Like, “We got sat in the bar, because Chris wasn’t wearing a tie” upscale. So, my message to the US is “Vegetarian does not have to be hair-shirt and sandals!”

We were at a table next to a young couple, and we exchanged the usual shared laughs when a server dropped a fork and similar. Towards the end of the meal, they said something to the server, and I pretty much realized what was going on … they were getting us a drink. It was all cool. They bought us a round, got up and were on their way. We’ve decided that this must be par for the course. Romans are friendly people, I suppose. At some point we’ll pick out a young couple near us and freak them out in a similar fashion.

The band was quite good. It’s always interesting to me that the accent goes away when a singer performs in a second language.

Spent the rest of the day exploring the Roman ruins. The line that kept rambling around in my head was “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” On the other hand, this is the bones of a culture that ruled the known world for a thousand years. As they started to go downhill, they did crap like kidnap hippos from the Nile and force them to fight for the amusement of the upper class. Thank goodness we would never do anything like that in our current enlightened empire.

Our feet hurt from walking, like, a dozen miles.

This will be short, because I’m on an Italian keyboard (so every metacharacter is in a different place than I’m used to), plus the ‘i’ and ‘m’ keys are crapped out. I can beat the hell out of the keyboard, pretending it’s an old manual, but the control keys will really rrtate GRAH rrtate GRRRRARGH! IRRITATE e GRRRR e AAAAAAACK! ME. It will irritate me. My typing is really loud now. People are looking.

Anyway, Rome is awesome. Our hotel is small and low budget (perfecto!). The most exciting part of the trip yesterday was the hell-bent, psychotic driver of the shuttle van. Jen was a little motion sick after the experience, and the desk clerk asked “ah, Italian style driving madam?” After crashing out for a well earned afternoon nap, we explored the Roman ruins and caught some dinner. The town is all about nooks, alleys, side streets that smell really good (assuming you like basil and garlic), and unexpected ancient buildings designed by major name artists.

Today, we walked our freakin’ feet off around the Vatican museums and the Basillica of St. Peter. Think “all the museums of the Smithsonian, jammed into one mighty complex,” or “the Louvre, but big.” This is the scale of museum where they don’t consolidate their Van Gogh paintings … there would be too many all at once.

The basillica made me think lots of interesting thoughts on God, art, humanity, and the church, but that will have to wait untl àm on a keyboard that doesnàt suck.

One final note: LJ is ‘helping’ me by displaying all the options and stuff in Italian. Awesome.

And with that, I think it’s time to be off. Ciao.

I will be traveling the world for the next week or so. I will be bringing neither laptop nor cell phone.

If you wish to meet up, I plan to be laying on my back on a bench in the Sistine Chapel for some portion of Monday, gazing in awe at the David and the Pieta later in the week, and riding a gondola in Venice in the middle. I will not be attending a public papal audience. Those are on Wed, and we’ll have moved on by then.

If anyone needs to get in touch with me, I recommend the front page (above the fold) of a major international newspaper. I’ll make an effort to skim those at least once a day.